South Entrance to the Prague Botanical Garden

The new South Entrance makes the area of the Botanical Garden accessible through the heritage-protected Vineyard of St. Claire. The assignment was to create a barrier-free entrance with a ticket office and sanitary facilities. The large height difference between the vineyard and the street as well as the values of the heritage-protected vineyard landscape character and its iconic silhouette in the panorama of Troja required a sensitive solution, empathetic to the environment and people, which is user-friendly in terms of their operation and communication – a fluidity and alternation of paths. The comprehensive solution to the paradoxes of the assignment makes the entrance more visible and the structure in the vineyard inconspicuous as well as creates an intimacy of the sanitary facilities while giving the impression of openness and natural illumination of the access to them. The proposal is a holistic, sensitive, and natural solution not only on its landscape and architectural scale but also on its interior-design level creating a full-filling external and internal environment of the new South Entrance.